Implement Decent Work, Support Decent Life, TUCP Tells DOLES

07 October 2009 –In two-separate meetings, TUCP Vice President Alejandro C. Villaviza, TUCP Party-List Representative Raymond Mendoza, and TUCP Officers handed over the World Day for Decent Work Call to Action for Decent Work, Decent Life! to DOLE Secretary Marianito Roque and PEZA Director General Lilia de Lima.

The WDDW Call to Action highlights eight key demands –protection of fundamental labor rights; changing unfair trade rules and reforming the World Bank and the IMF; improving the situation of women and men working in the informal economy; providing social protection to the majority of the world’s population who live without it; increasing development assistance; and ratifying and implementing the UN and ILO conventions around the protection of migrant workers and their families.

“We accept the Call to Action to guide our tripartite discussions,” says Secretary Roque while accepting the campaign’s brochure. “With Decent Work more workers can access more benefits. DOLE wants more workers to be covered by core labor standards, better wages and better working conditions. Rest assured that Decent Work is the direction that DOLE is heading.”

Director General Lilia de Lima, stated that PEZA shares the same aspiration as workers. She says: “At PEZA, two things are non-negotiable. One of the inviolable PEZA concerns is respect for rights of workers and second is protection of the environment.”

Regional officers of TUCP affiliate federations held dialogues and similar hand-over of the Call to Action to regional officers of the Department of Labor, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), with the participation of Regional Tripartite Industrial Peace Councils (RTIPCs) and Regional Tripartite Wage and Productivity Boards (RTWPBs) in Regions III, VII and XI.

WDDW 2009 CALL TO ACTION HAND-OVER CEREMONIES IN REGIONS XI, VII AND III